COMMENT | Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s speech struggles to keep up with his thought process. In sum, his elocution lags behind his ratiocination.

Recent instances of the lag put him in a spot.

The most telling case was his response to a media query after his China visit when news secreted that the People’s Republic was encouraged by Anwar’s position that Malaysia is willing to negotiate Petronas’ mining on a shelf off Sarawak’s coast that’s within our Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).

This played into China’s claim that all of the South China Sea is in that country’s territorial waters...